Here comes October already! Our next open mic & slam is meant to celebrate the spirits! If you’re trying out your dead poet costume, your vampire persona, your zombie slayer attire or you have a new murder ballad you’d like to sing, bring it! Practice for the Days of the Dead, All Saints, Halloween, or simply the ennui of falling leaves. the open mic is wide open, followed by the poetry slam! It all goes down at Knight Tyme Venue, next to Figo, in Decatur. 7.30pm, door and sign up with show to follow, $5, free to score the slam

In between sets will be our fabulous feature, Matthew CUBAN Hernandez. Now in his twenties, he’s been a poet in spotlights & touring all around the country for years. Most recently, he’s been in Atlanta for Southern Fried. He coached an impressive team of youth poets and then went on to the Finals stage himself, where he *almost* won the title of Southern Fried Individual Champion.To Art Amok, he always is one.

Here is one of his winning poems:

WRITING PROMPT: Identify a fear, a phobia, a nightmare that visits you, a stress dream, a person you dread, someone or an event that haunts you.Set the stage using all senses you can associate with these fears; colors, smells,tastes,images, the time of day, kinds of plants, clothes, seasons, temperatures.Identify character traits that are your own strengths or strengths that you admire.Without revealing your fear/phobia, hauntedness, take us into the moment with you as if it’s happening right now.Be the hero and lead us out of it, using any persona, tools, animal instincts that come to mind.Play the piece with as much detail as you can, or as if you were going to construct the scene as part of your haunted house & then how you get out.